Disposal of pet waste, specifically feces, is a significant problem in many communities. Conscientious owners of dogs, and occasionally owners of cats and other animals, typically take their pets for a walk once or more each day. These walks provide exercise for both the owner and the pet.
Pets will commonly defecate one or more times on such walks, producing droppings of feces along streets, sidewalks, on trails, lawns, etcetera. Owners of the pets are generally expected, either by law or custom, to remove this pet waste from private and public property. Fortunately, in most areas owners of these pets are very respectful of other people and are conscientious about picking up pet waste. Typically owners will carry one or more plastic bags, often recycled from newspaper wrappers or shopping bags, and will place the waste in the plastic bags. If a garbage can is readily accessible, this plastic bag containing the waste will be immediately discarded. Unfortunately, the norm on a walk is often that garbage cans are not immediately available. In such situations, the pet owner will carry the waste-containing bag in their free hand (while the pet is held on a leash with their other hand). In the alternative, sometimes owners will tie the plastic bag containing the waste to the leash. Although a good idea in concept, tying a waste-containing bag to a leash has numerous significant shortcomings. Perhaps the greatest shortcoming is that well-secured bags are often very difficult to untie from the leash. Efforts to untie the bag can often result in tearing holes in the bag or having the bag open up, obviously undesirable. If a pet owner decides to tie the bag more loosely to the leash, thereby allowing it to be untied more easily, a new pitfall arises because the bag then readily slides along the leash, slipping down to the pet, and potentially rupturing or falling off the leash. Thus, whether a person loosely ties a waste-containing bag to a pet leash or tightly ties the waste-containing bag to the leash, significant downsides to such methods are observed.
A number of persons have sought to resolve this issue by making devices that will secure bags to a pet's leash. Unfortunately, most such devices have significant shortcomings, either in how they are secured to the leash, how they hold a bag, how they release the waste-containing bag, etcetera. Therefore, a need exists for an improved device for retaining a bag containing pet waste.